Along with recent increase in server density, attempts have been made to increase performance and capacity of such a server by arranging as many components as possible, such as a central processing unit (CPU), a memory, and a hard disk drive (HDD), in a limited space.
Meanwhile, due to the increase in server density, efficient transfer of heat generated by a CPU and a HDD becomes difficult. Recent servers are generally provided with fans for cooling heat-generating components in addition to components such as a CPU, a memory, and a HDD. This has led to demand for effective arrangement of fans in a server to efficiently cool heat sources such as a CPU and a HDD.
In addition, the increase in server density has raised necessity to densely arrange both a fan, which is a source of generating vibration, and a drive such as a HDD. This increases resonance between the drive and the fan, and may consequently increase a rate of errors occurring in the drive, which is sensitive to vibration.
Patent Document 1 (Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2004-39140) discloses an optical disk device which prevents an optical disk from resonating with vibration generated by a fan. The optical disk device of Patent Document 1 includes control means for controlling the number of fan revolutions so that a value equal to an integral multiple of a fundamental frequency corresponding to the number of fan revolutions would not coincide with a natural frequency of the optical disk.
A high-density server has a possibility that errors occur frequently in a HDD due to resonance between vibration generated by a fan and the HDD sensitive to vibration. Such errors may cause a breakdown of the HDD, which may further cause a system failure at worst. It is desirable that resonance between a fan and a HDD be suppressed while a server is in operation. However, in practice, a hardware (HW) configuration, the number of revolutions of each on-board HDD, and the like are different from one server to another, and hence resonance points vary. For this reason, a general high-density server has a problem that it is difficult to take precise measures to suppress HDD failures caused by resonance between a fan and a HDD.
According to the optical disk device of Patent Document 1, a frequency of vibration generated by a fan does not coincide with a natural frequency of an optical disk, which prevents resonance of the optical disk. However, this optical disk device has a problem of not being capable of corresponding to resonance related to the entire optical disk device, varying accompanying with changes with aging of housing and the like.
The present invention aims to provide a management control system for controlling the number of fan revolutions so as to avoid the number of fan revolutions likely to cause a high frequency of errors in a drive, by actually measuring the numbers of fan revolutions causing a high frequency of errors in the drive, to be stored in a database, and using information stored in the database.